Why is whole person care so difficult to attain?

A good reflection on what patient centred care means, and some of the challenges, from the perspective of a chaplain. Quote:

One of the patient actors characterized this as “one stop health care.”

So if this model is so appreciated by and useful to patients, why don’t we who are supposed to be patient-centered do all of health care this way? I could list the many reasons that we as health care providers could come up with, but all of us know them. Most of these reasons have to do with how inconvenient this would be for each of us as providers simply pointing up again that our system is still mostly built around the needs and convenience of the staff rather than the patients.

So what would it take to change the process?

I think we would have to commit to asking at every step of the way, “Are we doing it this way because it is best for the patient or because it is best/most convenient for us as providers?” I think we will find that today most often the answer is the latter not the former.

If we flipped it, we would have to hold each other to the premise that we are about the patient and not about us. My guess is that, if we could make this kind of change, not only patient satisfaction would improve, but health care outcomes would also be better, certainly communication among the team would improve, and costs of all kinds would decrease.